I didn't really do anything in spite of having basically 10 hours of free time, but hey, I did get through the entirety of the League of Legends semifinal today and I'm going to be going to bed very early today and probably getting a shower tomorrow as a result. (Something I desperately need as I skipped out on one on Saturday.)

​So like. Not the best most productive of days, but also has silver linings.

So like...I got all of the units in my Civ 3 scenario, but this is a process that took literally weeks of work, doing hours of work each day I worked on it. Probably in the realm of 100-200 hours' worth of work to get the units in.

...I finished the buildings AND wonders in less than 48 hours, across two days where I didn't spend much time on it.

I legit have no clue why the process for these is so much faster.

Now, granted.

I will need to do a second pass on all units/buildings/wonders once I get the tech tree done. (Which is what I am doing next. Tech tree, governments, can be done in either order but tech trees first makes more sense to me now.)

And then a third pass to make each have a unique civilopedia entry so that it's actually possible to know what each unit and building actually does without my creator knowledge.

But the initial stage is there.

So like.

I'm definitely making a lot of progress there.

Did a lot of work on my Civ 3 mod and started playing Kingdom: Classic (I didn't realize it was actually a hard​ game!), so not much accomplished, but hey, I do be doing things!

Okay so I'm probably not on top of everything, but today, I've felt like I'm on top of basically everything. Compared to yesterday, that's progress! Now, granted: still got a lot of things which I probably am forgetting about. But I'm mostly on top of things. I'll need to brush my teeth and such before I go to bed, buuuuut, I showered, changed clothes, kept up to date on emails, did my daily internet stuff, basically everything I need to do, including my squats and crunches.

Right now as I write this blog I'm doing an update to XSplit for my stream tonight, and I'm actually writing a blog! Now, granted: I hated yesterday's stream. I actually had people show up for it! Which you'd think would be a good thing!
...If it weren't the worst stream I've ever done.

I had no idea what to do.
I had my power go out on me, so that killed my first stream.

And then on my second stream, twitch decided to basically kill the stream as everything was fine on my end, but I was dropping thousands of frames.

I was doing nothing.
And the stream had difficulties.
So what did those people who showed up see?

Basically the worst streamer of all time.

​Speaking of stream, as I was writing this, XSplit did update. The new update looks all fancy and such, but it did remove all of my prior settings. I had to re-enter them so my next stream might be a little bit...well, glitchy. We'll have to see.

Anyway what I wanted to blog about is that yesterday, I forgot to blog about a dream I had.
It was an anime (kinda like how I got a dream about Phyrra and Cyrus being an anime), this one set in a high school that is mostly our earth but has some minor Fantasy aspects to it. There's Alchemy, but Alchemy is an artform mostly seen as 'obsolete', as technology has grown to do what Alchemy used to be the only method for, and technology (while it requires building and maintenance) isn't one-time use and isn't something the user needs to know a lot about in order to still make use of it.

The setting is actually an all-ages school, K-12, which pioneered many groundbreaking things in the past. No discrimination based on race, gender, age, social background, income, physical/mental ability, religion, orientation, etc.

However, though the school did do those groundbreaking things, including co-ed sports that allow for everyone of all ages to participate (to a certain degree; they will still try their best to sort people into appropriately-sized groups where they are matched with individuals with complimenting skills), and those things are ingrained into the culture, in more recent years, the school has become notably more...decrepit. 

The school's main focus of Alchemy has fallen from their main draw to a mere shadow of what it was, and while most of the staff and students are genuinely caring individuals, there's a fair amount of corruption and darker elements going on in the school, including shady business and outright immoral actions.

The protagonist (modeled after Lelouch from Code Geass), a prodigy who is the latest generation of one of the founding members of the school (and thus, knows the ins and outs of it), sets out to change that, with his knowledge of Alchemy. He sets out to create an elaborate ruse:

Taking advantage of legends of demons, he creates the guise of him and his younger sisters being a trio of female demons (he is androgynous enough to pull it off, with the aid of a wig). Employing a lot of theatrics as well as mastery of the hidden areas of the school, combined with extensive Alchemy knowledge, he tackles issues with the school's corruption. Alchemical potions allow him to see the memories of others, and from that, witness the issues not seen in the school, and then he sets out in a Phantom Thieves style heist (taking cues from Persona 5) to select a target and then, again with alchemy, basically show the target the consequences of their corrupt actions, the suffering of all their victims, how much harm they've inflicted and to have it affect them.

There's more to it than that but I genuinely think that it could be the next big thing after Phyrra and Cyrus if I expand it out the way Phyrra and Cyrus was expanded out. The foundation is there. Like, this is the most foundation for a dream I've had since Phyrra and Cyrus (well, with the exception of the one lucid dream I had where I wrote it down and lost it all).

It's entirely a different take than Phyrra and Cyrus other than having very small fantasy elements like Alchemy and maybe some fictional pseudo-magic materials that are considered technology (plus strong superstition and belief in spiritual things that are widespread in spite of the dominance of science).

But it literally wrote itself. Dreams don't do that often.

This one did.

​That's a sign for success.

Not a very GOOD start, mind you, but a start.
I did a stream today.
I also practice a more feminine voice today.
Granted, voice is still not good.
And stream encountered multiple issues, like a power hit and twitch being garbage. Buuut, I at least did it!

​So we're getting going.

...But I am working on being a much much better person overall.

There's still a lot of things I need to do.

I've been compiling a list of questions that I need to ask my supervisor at work.

I need to stay on top of a lot of stuff that, right now, I very much am not. (Showers and dental hygiene mostly, but also to some extent my lesser obligations.)

But while there's a boatload of stuff that I need to do.

I'm still making a lot of progress.

I'm hoping to commit to streaming with a schedule, 3 days a week (Wednesday night/Thursday morning, Thursday night/Friday morning, and Friday night/Saturday morning, all at circa 3-6 am, give or take an hour for both the start/end times being as early as 2 am starting or as late as 4 am starting and going until as early as 5 am but as late as 7 am).

I'm furthering my work as a content creator, too, by compiling an entire list of things I want to make.
I'm working a lot, so like.

I'm making progress!

I feel like I am taking control of my life.

Very very slowly.

I'm still not quite doing everything I want to be doing. Not doing the walking (which I desperately need to do because I have zero stamina right now and get out of breath quickly and winded easily) yet, not brushing daily, not showering as often as I want to, not staying on top of everything I want to be, but like.

I'm getting more and more and more with time.

So like.

I'm thinking.

I can do this.

Phyrra and Cyrus, my dream of dreams to make, might be a long long ways away, but it starts with doing what I am doing. I genuinely think that the best way for me to make Phyrra and Cyrus a reality is for me to get people hyped about me making a project. Which I do by getting people to know me and know what I am doing.

It's slightly roundabout, but I also need the skills I am setting out to acquire. Video editing for a start, also sound editing, also animation.

Now, for Phyrra and Cyrus, I will need to hire people better than I will be to do that sort of thing.

But I still think that the content creation ideas that I want to make involving teaching myself those things...
...Will make making Phyrra and Cyrus that much easier as I will be able to demonstrate what I want to create easier and have a better idea of what needs to be done and so on and so forth.

(Also on that note, I still need to write the blog I have on Phyrra and Cyrus. So I don't forget about it altogether, it involves our alchemist and her aesthetic and how she presents herself and the breakthrough I had there in realizing something about her but again, need to do that later, can't do it tonight.)

Side-note, today marks me completing the first stage of units in my Civ 3 mod.
Next up is the buildings/wonders (I won't need to make the wonders for every city yet but I do need to make the buildable wonders at the very least), and then the governments, and then the techs, and then revising the resources/units/buildings/wonders/governments to fit the techs, and then manually building the map.

All in all I'd say that I'm about 12.5% done with the mod since getting what I've gotten is a significant amount of the work but there's a looooot more to do there.

​Also also: refill of hormones picked up, but the T-blocker's not as effective as I'd prefer. After my psychiatry appointment in November, will be needing to go back to the endocrinologist about this.

Trash at blogging, given the gaps.
Trash at getting better at my job; I swore I'd be the best possible lifeguard by the end of October but I've less than a week before I break that promise to myself unless I step it up in that time.
I'm barely staying afloat otherwise, functioning, performing, suboptimally.

I also was basically a failure today in that I had ample opportunities to be a good Samaritan (literally passed FIVE blinking light vehicles without stopping at any), and the thing that I set out to get today (refill on hormones), I couldn't get, and won't be able to get tomorrow, either.

Plus with the internet out for the majority of today I missed out on a ton.

The silver lining to this is that I've still got ideas for creating stuff and I did make significant progress on my Civ 3 mod (I'm almost finished with the first pass on the units, where I have all of them in the game, functioning--granted, after that comes a need to set their technologies, and after that comes renaming each PRTO unit I've added to have their unique name ideally with a civilopedia entry, butstill, almost done with the first pass there!), both getting units and also some preliminary work on governments.

It's far from the most productive of things because what good is the civ 3 mod even if I DO manage to finish it? I guess I could maybe maybe stream me playing the mod, but like. What is there to do beyond that? Who would I really share it with? And how would I share it with them anyway? I genuinely don't know why I'm spending time on something that I don't really see what good will come of it when finished.

At least my Castle 4-0 in minecraft serves a theoretical purpose when finished. Since it's possible to import solo worlds you make in creative into a multiplayer realm, I can shill out the cash for a minecraft realm when Castle 4-0 is actually completely finished, and then share the world I made for others to explore, appreciate, enjoy, etc. Is probably a long long ways away but I at least know its theoretical value when finished. (Speaking of the castle tho, did share my work on both 3-0 and 4-0 which has inspired me to keep working there more.)

With the Civ 3 mod, though? I genuinely don't know what the endgoal is. In that I know precisely what I want to add, what I want to build, what I want to create, but not what to do with the finished product.

Either I'll figure it out when I get there or I'll abandon the project altogether, we'll have to see.

And I realize I've got important blogs to make. (There's a really REALLY important one to make about Phyrra and Cyrus.)

However.

I'm honestly a little bit...well, "kept busy", by work, and the aftermath of work.

Aftermath in this case meaning, I'm days behind on watching League of Legends Worlds, watching EDG vs. T1 (D5 of playoffs), because I've not had the ability to watch the more recent stuff yet. Among other things.

I'm in for another back to back to back to back work week, Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, all requiring me to go to bed about when Worlds starts (circa 4 am) and wake up when it ends (circa noon) and go to work and come home at circa 9 pm, leaving me with ~5 free hours...when Worlds days are typically ~7 hours long (give or take).

While at 1.5x speed, that's doable in a single day, it's only doable if I'm not spending time watching another stream that I consider that important to watch. Meaning that on a day like Sunday when there's other things I want to do until circa midnight, I've only got ~3-4 hours, which is a tighter fit, and one I often can't squeeze in the entirety of.

I will have more control over my life going into the future.

Worlds will be ending fairly soon.
I will get acclimated at work, finish all the work stuff that I'm struggling with now, have a more established normalized work schedule, etc.

​But it'll take me some time to do so and until I get there, my life will be a hectic chaotic mess.

Yaknow, the thing that's meant to be daily which for literally 6 years straight was precisely that but in the last year or so has begun to slip to be much much lower and be closer to like once a week because of my incompetence?

That daily thing?

Well speaking of incompetence, that brings me to a thought I wanted to voice and the actual reason for me blogging today;

My new job as a lifeguard.

Right now, I don't feel fully incompetent, but I also don't feel competent.
I want to be an investment: not an employee hired because they were short on staff, valued for being an extra body, but actually someone who was worth hiring and keeping even if they become borderline-overstaffed.

I want to become the best lifeguard they ever hire.

Someone who starts out with the very very big growing pains. Who is genuinely not very good, just adequate (and barely so), but who will grow to become a basically perfect employee.

I'm not there yet.

But I genuinely think I could be.

I don't feel like I'm an impostor, a fake, a fraud (feelings I had when I worked before at my old job especially since my hiring process was somewhat...unorthodox).

I feel like I was hired on the merits of having earned it, been worthy of it, working for it, and that I can live up to that promise.

I want to be better.
I need to be better.

There's presumably an acceptable growth period where they know I won't be really prepared for the job, so won't be fully competent, won't be fully adept, won't be doing everything I'm meant to, will make mistakes, will need help, etc.

But that period is temporary and I need to be capable of doing my job basically on my own after that grace period has left.

I have a genuine desire, a genuine drive, to be better, to become the best.

I want to become an employee seen as the most valuable lifeguard to have ever been hired.
I want to become not just an extra body, who is okay at the job but is clearly not great at lifeguarding, to becoming a model lifeguard for all other lifeguards to strive towards becoming.

There's no fear of losing the job behind this drive.
There's no feeling of needing to prove it to myself behind this drive.
There's nothing ulterior in my motive here, although I will admit to bonuses like the above and similar and more.

It genuinely comes from a deep-slated desire to just be better at lifeguarding.

I always knew I enjoyed being a lifeguard, and that I genuinely wanted to lifeguard, not just as a job, but because I know I can be good at the job, and it's one of the few jobs I know I can be good at.

But the more I lifeguard again, the greater this desire to just be better at lifeguarding becomes.
I don't want to slack off.
I don't want to become lazy.
I don't want to become so-so.

I want to excel. I want to do the job right. And that's just a passion. Just a genuine desire to do the job not just well, but as close to perfect as is possible for a human.

To be better than I was before.

To improve at my job.

I know I'm not there yet.

But I WANT to get there.

​Sooner rather than later.